


Imperfect

by Petits Pois (letsgogetlost)



Series: Amerihawk Week 2018 [6]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AmeriHawk, Amerihawk Week 2018, Deaf Clint Barton, M/M, coffee is liquid affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-08-01 04:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16277996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letsgogetlost/pseuds/Petits%20Pois
Summary: The first time Clint saw Steve, he hated him. He wasn't really sure when that stopped, and something else replaced it.





	Imperfect

**Author's Note:**

> Amerihawk Week 2018, Theme 6: ~~Love at first sight or~~ Hate (that turns to love) at first sight

The first time Clint saw Steve, he hated him.

He'd hated him before that, too. As soon as he heard Steve was back, that they'd found him, that they were going to try to unfreeze him, something hard and unpleasant had settled in his stomach and refused to go away. It didn't get any better when the experiment was successful, when they did unfreeze him.

He hated everything about it. About Steve. 

He hated how SHIELD's attention was suddenly focused on this one weird thing, this appearance from the past, from comic books and news reels and legends, when they should be paying attention to other things. Threats, instead of novelties.

He hated how Phil's face lit up every time he talked about it. Phil was absolutely thrilled, of course he was. His lifelong hero was back from the dead, and in the very facility where he was based, right downstairs, thawing out. Clint wanted to be happy for him, excited on his behalf, but he couldn't. Every time Phil talked about it the unpleasant feeling in his stomach grew. Because Phil's number one interest was right there, so he was going to be Phil's number one priority, wasn't he? Phil was probably going to ask to be transferred to that project. To be his handler. What value was Strike Team Delta to Phil - to anyone - when Captain America was there?

And it wasn't like Clint was going to get to work with Steve. Or like Steve was even going to like him. He was futzing Captain America, the beacon of all that was right and good. He wasn't going to have any time for a reformed petty criminal who preferred to work at long range and took dirty jobs no one else would.

 

The first time Clint saw him, though, it was even worse. Steve was with Fury and some other agents, being hurried down a hall to some meeting or briefing or something. He was so tall, and so blond, and so perfect, and he was letting himself be taken somewhere, and he giving the people the group passed benign, perfect smiles as they stopped and stared. Clint would have been scowling and dodging looks and probably trying to duck out of the group entirely, get somewhere where the bureaucratic might of SHEILD wasn't trying to control his life.

Clint _was_ scowling, actually. Because those smiles were like something out of a book. Like something out of specific books, ones Clint had poured over as a kid, imagining himself good before he learned that with his background, his past, the best he could ever hope for was neutral. Not bad, not good. Trying hard enough, but never really turning out as more than a hired gun. He wasn't a hero.

The group was headed his way and he wasn't going to let himself be the recipient of one of those bland, perfect smiles. Even if it did mean ducking down a hallway he wasn't familiar with and going the long way around to his own briefing, which made him late and got him a disappointed look from Hill, but whatever. He did what he needed to do.

After that, he could always tell when Steve was around, because there was always a bustle, a commotion, people shifting and looking, and Clint could avoid it without much effort, avoid the feeling in him that he didn't much like and didn't much want to acknowledge.

When Steve started showing up in the gym, that was even worse. Because he was always there alone, and always at weird times. The first time, Clint hadn't expected it. He'd let himself in to do some training after hours, when he could go without his hearing aids, and do his old circus exercises without anyone getting curious. (Whatever the SHIELD gym team thought, there was nothing like acrobatic and contortion exercises to keep you limber, strong, and ready for whatever life threw at you.) Usually there was no one there, then, but this time there was - a figure half in shadow, beating the hell out of a punching bag. Clint approached cautiously, and recognized the man's silhouette right around when the man noticed him.

Their eyes met, and - _futz_. What right did Captain America have to look so tired, so lost, so surprised. So soft, and vulnerable.

Clint fled the room without a word. Apparently the gym was Steve Rogers's too now, along with Phil and all of SHIELD.

 

When Fury brought up the new opportunity at Project Pegasus in a meeting a few days later, Clint leapt at the opportunity. A few months monitoring a boring scientist in a boring science facility somewhere very boring and very far away from New York City and Captain Steve Rogers and the sick feeling Clint got whenever he saw him? Perfect. And he bet no one there would be using the gym there late at night when he wanted it all to himself.

And really, it was good. When he didn't have to look at Rogers, or at Phil's excited smile, or all the hustle and bustle of the SHIELD facility, he could sort of make himself forget about it. He could just watch the weird blue cube thing and all the scientists working around it way down on the lab floor, and laugh when Selvig did something goofy, and be left alone.

 

He shouldn't have been surprised when things all went to hell. Things always went to hell. Really he only had a few moments to feel surprised, though, and then he was waking up with a nasty headache in a cell on the helicarrier, with Natasha beside him and a new and different kind of sinking feeling in his gut.

He didn't like Steve much better after fighting beside him, though he respected him more. The guy wasn't just a symbol, a visitation from a more simple past. He was a fighter, and a good one. It still didn't mean Clint wanted to be around him, or see him. After the fight was over he didn't want to be around anyone, let alone a big, blond, gentle, powerful reminder of everything that had happened, and everything he had lost, and of the simplicity of _good_ people and _good_ morality and not murdering a bunch of your comrades and getting your handler and friend killed just because you were stupid enough to get in front of an asshole from another planet.

 

He wasn't really sure when any of that changed. It wasn't like the hate, which hit him so fully-formed as soon as Steve came into his life. This was slower, more subtle. More insidious, like a creeping suspicion, a nasty hunch - but different from those, because it wasn't bad. Just at some point, months and months after Loki, in between missions and briefings and quiet afternoons when nothing much happened, Clint realized that his stomach no longer turned with unhappiness when he saw Steve. That, in fact, he actually sort of liked seeing him. Found it reassuring, walking into a conference room or running onto the Quinjet and seeing him there.

It was probably because Steve always made sure he had a fresh cup of coffee waiting for him when he got to a meeting. Or maybe because he always faced him, and didn't cover his mouth, and didn't yell or speak slowly like he was talking to an idiot. Or maybe because he asked Clint's opinions, and followed Clint's suggestions when they were good ones.

 

Clint did wonder why Steve did it - why he treated him so differently from the other people around them. Why he was so kind and respectful, when everyone else was either wary or just plain professional. Even Natasha was all work, no softness, no play when they were dealing with SHEILD missions. Clint figured it was just one of those things, Steve Rogers was just that good of a guy. Strong and handsome and perfect, and achingly nice and respectful even to a man who everyone had every reason to hate. Even Clint couldn't forgive himself for what had happened, but somehow Steve, that paragon of excellence, did it, easy as all-American apple pie.

It was almost enough to make Clint hate him all over again, except that somewhere between friendly words and many proffered cups of coffee and smiles he couldn't avoid because they were aimed straight at him, he'd apparently lost that ability altogether. So he settled on a soft, vague resentment that he forgot about every time he actually saw Steve. 

 

He hadn't planned to ask about it, really, but it was one of those patented Clint Barton moments, when his mouth or body ran faster than his brain and he did something he immediately regretted.

He'd run into Steve in the Tower locker rooms at some ungodly hour of the night. That happened sometimes. Neither of them ever commented on it, though Steve, ever-polite, always wished him goodnight when they parted ways and Clint, after a few stumbles, had started doing it back. 

But that night was different. It was coming up on the one year anniversary of when he'd 'met' Loki, and he hadn't been sleeping. When he did sleep, it was interrupted by some of the worst nightmares he'd ever had - and he'd had some doozies in his time. These ones didn't even have the good grace to all be about Loki and Phil and the Helicarrier. No, his mind couldn't be that kind. It had to dredge up a whole lifetime of bad memories, and remind him of more things to dwell on when he was awake. More bad things he'd done, more parts of his life he wasn't proud of, or happy to remember.

So that night, when Steve nodded at him in the locker room and said goodnight, headed out from beating the crap out of the reinforced punching bag Tony had designed for him, Clint managed a mumbled 'goodnight', but then turned around to face Steve, his locker slamming shut behind him so loud that his hearing aids reverbed uncomfortably, and Steve jumped and Clint immediately felt bad - which only added to his jumble of unhappy feelings.

"Why are you like this to me?" he asked.

Steve gave him the frown he usually used for modern pop culture. "Like what?"

"You're always so _good_. You don't have to be, I'm not breakable and besides, I don't really deserve it."

Steve kept frowning, though it shifted into one that looked more like a Captain America face - maybe the one he used when he told high school students not to do drugs, or whatever. 

Clint didn't know what to do with the new information that one, he could distinguish between Steve and Cap and two, he had different feelings about each.

Steve sat down on the locker room bench and gave it a pointed look. Clint considered not taking him up on it, not sitting down, but if he was going to receive a Cap lecture, he had literally asked for it, hadn't he.

But Steve's face had slid out of Cap mode and was now somewhere Clint couldn't entirely read. Still frowning, but something soft in the eyes. Was he sad? How in the world had Clint made him _sad_?

Clint sat down.

"I know you're not breakable, Clint."

That was better. Clint could work with that. "Could have fooled me, have you seen me?"

"You… you literally just said you aren't. But no, that's fine, because that's true. We're both, we're all both. Unbreakable and breakable. You're not the only one down here at 3am working out your angst and insomnia on inanimate objects."

"Yeah. Well."

"What did you mean? In particular. What parts of my behavior do you want to know about?"

Clint took a breath. He knew he could say forget it. He knew he could get up and walk out, and Steve probably wouldn't even begrudge him for it, because he was just that good. But dammit, he did actually want to know the answer. "You treat me different. You don't bother me about what happened and you don't act like I'm a threat to others. Or myself. You respect my opinions and ideas, even when they're shitty opinions or stupid ideas."

"I'm not going to answer the part where you put yourself down. Here's the rest. In the war, I saw similar things. Not the same, but… similar. I had soldiers around me who blamed themselves for disastrous events, disastrous missions, even when things were completely out of their control. And I tried different things, wanting to make it better, and sometimes it went badly. The best I found was just letting them move forward, but also letting them know they still had my support and respect and were needed on the team. So, I figured, similar situation, similar reaction."

"And, you always make sure I can understand you." 

"Yeah, because that's common courtesy, Clint, come on."

"Plenty of people don't do that."

"Plenty of people are assholes."

Clint laughed - Steve swearing was somehow still always a bit of a surprise. And he didn't do it that much, so when he did, you knew he meant it. Their eyes met, and Steve was smiling a little. Clint blinked and looked away.

"And you bring me coffee."

"Yeah, well… you like it."

"Everyone knows I like it, everyone else expects me to get it for myself."

Steve shrugged, and his expression was unreadable to Clint again - Clint, who was usually an expert on understanding faces, interpreting micro-expressions. "You didn't smile a lot, back… back after everything. And one time I poured you coffee from that terrible machine in the SHIELD break room, and you smiled, and I realized I didn't think I'd ever seen you smile, so I kept doing it. And it seemed like you liked it and it maybe made you less ill-at-ease in meetings, and… it kept making you smile. And I guess, you know, you still don't smile all that much, but, well." He took a deep breath. Clint felt completely unmoored, because he'd never seen Steve talk like this before, stumbling, going back on himself, and he was trying to tell himself it was sleep deprivation or something. On both their parts. Contributing to Steve's rambling and to Clint feeling like was floating about a foot off the locker room bench. "Well," Steve said again. "I realized I liked your smiles. And if coffee kept them coming, I'd keep the coffee coming."

Clint only became aware that his mouth was hanging open when Steve met his eyes and pressed his own lips together. Nervous, that was the expression. Perfect, beautiful, collected Steve Rogers was _nervous_. Clint shut his mouth and maybe made a noise like a fish before managing a "Um - oh."

"Oh," Steve repeated, flatly.

"Oh." Clint was frowning now, trying to gather together all the words Steve had said. "You… like my smile."

"Yes?"

"You… like me?"

"Yes?"

"Is that a question like you're not sure you like me, or a question like you're not sure how I'll react."

"Second one."

Clint nodded, and looked down at the bench for a second to collect his thoughts. It looked about as beat up as he usually felt, plastic scuffed and bent. Probably from too many overly strong people using it as a place to tie their shoes. 

He looked back up before he spoke. "I don't get it. You're… you. And I'm me."

"Yeah. And I like you." Steve shrugged. "I think you're great. And very handsome. I thought that the first time I saw you. But obviously if that makes you uncomfortable I understand - I shouldn't have even said anything, it's very unprofessional…"

"No! No. It's okay. It's… it's good? I don't get it, but it's good. 'Cause, uh… I think I like you, too."

It was Steve's turn for his mouth to hang open. The "Really?" that followed looked like a whisper - Clint wasn't even sure he'd read it right.

"Really. To be honest, I hated you at first. You were so perfect and handsome and… perfect… and Phil was so obsessed with you, but… but that's Cap, isn't it. And you're Steve. And my feelings are still mixed on Cap, it's complicated, he stands for so much good and I'm such a disaster, but Steve… Steve respects me and brings me coffee and hangs out in the gym in the middle of the night, and I like Steve and, and right now I kind of want to kiss Steve."

"Steve would like that very much." 

They both burst out laughing, but it softened to slow chuckles as Clint leaned forward, and touched Steve's jaw - his perfect jaw, now slightly stubbly, a little sticky from his workout, perfectly imperfect. Clint met his eyes, and kissed him.


End file.
